Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday January 31, 2014 @05:09PM
from the works-at-making-money-for-the-medication-providers dept.

KentuckyFC writes: "Americans spent an estimated $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013 — and that doesn't even include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat. Factor in the emotional energy we invest in keeping our companion animals healthy, and you'd hope for high confidence in the end results. But when one journalist investigated the science behind the meds being used to treat his aging dog's osteoarthritis, he was in for a nasty surprise. Glucosamine and chondroitin food supplements? Next to useless. Tramadol to kill pain? It's probably just getting dogs high. The one treatment that's been proven to help, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called carprofen, is often left on the shelf because of fears — likely overblown — that it might damage dogs' kidneys. In part, you can blame this sorry state of affairs on a lack of financial incentives for drug companies to run clinical trials on animals. But often, vets aren't paying attention to the studies that have been done. If we want our dogs and cats to receive the best possible medical care, we need to ask our vets some tougher questions about why they think the drugs will work."

What's worse is we push profitable drugs. I put myself on phenotropil (a high dose--people recognize the stimulant effect at 100mg, but reading ADHD research and doing molecular composition and mass analysis I've figured out it should be about 20-25mg twice per day), and that's had miraculous effects on the ADHD--and the dissociation (which I've tended to use as a tool--but holy shit being a part of the real world is overwhelming), and even the sociopathy (emotional centers of my brain are hooking back up

This is a perfect example of knowing enough to be dangerous. You're making all these blanket statements decrying prescribed drugs that are well understood while promoting drugs that are not prescribed based upon some unproven beliefs, and creating and promoting a cocktail of vitamins and supplements that you believe might counteract negative effects of these drugs that no doctor prescribes for what you're doing... Danger, Will Robinson! I sense someone about to fall off the cliff into quack-land!

I felt like our initial visit was almost like getting cased by a grifter; like they wanted to see how much I was willing to shell out. They started me out with a sample of a deworming med then asked for a stool sample from the pup which of course showed some parasite that had to be treated with another med. So, I've had her 2 weeks and besides vaccinations she's already been exposed to 2 medications. And, each visit has been a setup for another visit in the weeks to come. I just feel like i'm getting sucked into a merry-go-round of perpetual medication and unnecessary care. But, I'm not a professional so I don't have much ability to make judgements.

Um what are you talking about? A human absolutely DOES need that same kind of attention if they're healthy. You're talking about the equivalent of a child in the first year of life, not a 20-year-old college kid. Kids go in to see the pediatrician about 4 or 5 times in their first year for routine check-ups, vaccinations, boosters, and more. Then, after that, they pretty much see the doctor for a checkup each year indefinitely. How is that different from what you're seeing with your puppy? You also have to remember, for a dog seeing the vet once a year, that's equivalent to a human going every 4 or 5 years or so based on how rapidly their body ages in relation to a human's lifespan.

Also, most human children don't come from a puppy mill or spend time eating dirt, plants, and bugs outdoors- if they did they'd also be tested and treated for parasites as necessary.

If you're feeling like you're being grifted at this point when your vet is just offering you appropriate and practical medical care for your pet, you're setting yourself up to be a difficult, irresponsible pet owner. Please don't go that route and at least, as this poorly though-out original article mentions, at least ASK your vet why you need to do something and how/why it works if you're not sure rather than just assuming you're being scammed and doing a disservice to your pet.

Kids go in to see the pediatrician about 4 or 5 times in their first year for routine check-ups, vaccinations, boosters, and more.

The key words you are missing are "if healthy". All of those things you mentioned are absolutely not needed for a kid to live if there's nothing wrong with them. Vaccinations should be done, but many people have been skipping that lately.

I had a friend who skipped a routine checkup because she was super busy - the manager of a plant she owned had quit, and she had to move up there and take care of things for months. She didn't go to the doctor again until she started to feel ill. Turns out she had fact growing pancreatic cancer - and she was dead within another six months. If she had gone to get her regular checkup done, they would have caught it before it hit stage IV and she would have had a much better prognosis. DO NOT SKIP YOUR ROUT

There's your problem. Get a shelter mutt. They are healthier, more easygoing, and you can feel like you're contributing to the solution, not the problem.
Says the former owner of a cocker spaniel from a "reputable breeder" that developed cataracts at three years old.

Lots of other pets and livestock don't get the same levels of medical care and do quite fine

THIS is not particularly good reasoning. The human race survived a long time without modern medical care, but a lot more babies survive to adulthood with proper modern medicine. The same is true for puppies.

Sure, deworming (and you don't need a second opinion on *that*, almost all puppies have roundworms and they will be a lot more likely to thrive if you treat them, just look it up), monthly flea and tick medication (possibly with antiparasitics to prevent heartworm or reinfestation of roundworm), vaccin

The human race survived a long time without modern medical care, but a lot more babies survive to adulthood with proper modern medicine.

Exactly. And that's what makes historical life expectancy numbers so wacky looking. If you made it to about 5 years old you had a decent numbers of years ahead of you, but the child mortality rate was horrific by modern standards.

Erm... actually there is no DNA test for hip dysplasia, nor is it a single gene (tho it appears, per pedigree analysis, to be largely the result of one dominant and one recessive). You can xray and evaluate hips that way, but it will not tell you which dogs are 'carriers'.

Nor is it necessarily wise to cull out all the carriers from a given gene pool (ie. breed). Sometimes such culling unwittingly removes necessary genes as well, and leaves you in a worse state than before. This happened in one breed that ha

For decades now reputable breeders have been turning dogs into unhealthy freakshow breeds that can't breathe, can't jump, can't run, and can't give birth without a c-section. I'm not sure that's a recommendation.

You know I've suspected that but I'm not willing to try! This whole raw feeding movement has really changed a lot of my perceptions about eating. Another reason I'm wary of vets is how so many of them respond when they hear about raw feeding dogs.

If you do this, I assume you also provide appropriate fruits and vegetables? (i.e. not one of many that are toxic, but enough that the dog gets a well-rounded nutrition).

Dogs are not like cats who live mostly on protein - they are omnivores that can benefit from foods like carrots, pumpkin//sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, some greens, blueberries, apples, etc (but not onions, garlic, grapes, avocados, etc which vary from mildly GI toxic to potentially deadly anemia).

You previously stated your dog had worms. If this is the case, then it's not a reputable breeder. Or perhaps you have found a crappy vet. It can't hurt to go to another for a second opinion. At least you'll know.

Wrong. Most puppies, no matter where or how they are born, have roundworms. They are fairly endemic in small numbers and transmitted by the mother in the womb. It's normal, and not a big deal to treat. You can leave it alone and hope your puppy manages to gets enough nutrition to thrive and fight them off, or you can spend a bit and deworm. But why anyone would want to get a new puppy and play survival of the fittest with it is beyond me (and pretty horrible). Not to mention roundworms can potentially

You previously stated your dog had worms. If this is the case, then it's not a reputable breeder. Or perhaps you have found a crappy vet. It can't hurt to go to another for a second opinion. At least you'll know.

Wrong. Most puppies, no matter where or how they are born, have roundworms. They are fairly endemic in small numbers and transmitted by the mother in the womb. It's normal, and not a big deal to treat. You can leave it alone and hope your puppy manages to gets enough nutrition to thrive and fight them off, or you can spend a bit and deworm. But why anyone would want to get a new puppy and play survival of the fittest with it is beyond me (and pretty horrible). Not to mention roundworms can potentially spread to people is it worth a bit of money to *you* not to get worms?:)

I didn't say that they didn't have worms at any point. A reputable breeder will have wormed them already and have detailed records of this and all vaccinations and a vet schedule and records for the parents as well. . I've never heard of any good breeder that would send puppies home that have not been wormed. You sure as hell aren't going to take a dog home from a good breeder and have to go to a vet to discover it has worms.

I didn't say that they didn't have worms at any point. A reputable breeder will have wormed them already and have detailed records of this and all vaccinations and a vet schedule and records for the parents as well. . I've never heard of any good breeder that would send puppies home that have not been wormed. You sure as hell aren't going to take a dog home from a good breeder and have to go to a vet to discover it has worms.

Well, that depends on how old the puppy is. Most breeders will let (and encourage) you pick up a puppy at 8-10 weeks (once it's weaned) at which point it will have had max 1 deworming (2-3 are required) and 1 DHPP shot (of 3 required). And you have to wait longer before giving other required or optional ones like rabies, lyme, lepto, etc.

Not only have I had several dogs over the years and have family friends who raise and train/show dogs, my Dad is a veterinarian with 40 years of experience. The conventi

I thought about that and I've been looking at other vet recommendations, but if this is just industry practice, how would I know who's good and who's not? I found the vet reviews to be pretty consistent in my area.

Wild animals often live in dirty environments and eat questionable foods, and yet they are usually just fine.

No they aren't. They die in large numbers. Take housecats, for example -- indoor average lifespan is >12 years, outdoor average lifespan is 5 years. Stray dogs live 1-2 years on the street, but average 11 years in a home.

The best thing I can suggest is to go to your local farm supply store instead of the vet, for anything but the most serious symptoms. They typically have the medications readily available for a reasonable price, and will often have people knowledgeable enough to point you in the right direction.

Case in point: My cat had a nasty eye infection, and I decided I didn't want to spend the time, effort or money to pack up the cat and go to the vet. So I went to the local farm supply store and said "hey, my cat has goopy eyes that aren't clearing up, and in fact seem to be getting worse. Do you have anything for that?"

They sold me a small tube of ophthalmic antibiotic ointment intended for cats/dogs, gave me brief instructions on how much to use and how to apply it without putting the cat's eye out, and about $10 later I was on my way home. It cleared up the cat's eyes in a couple days, and I had plenty left over and have used it on a couple occasions since then. In total, I probably saved at least $500 in vet bills, since I've used it to treat 2 cats on 2-3 occasions each over the past several years.

The same type of store will often have good wormers, earmite meds, etc., so as long as the animal has classic symptoms that are easily diagnosed (and again, if in doubt just describe the symptoms to someone working at the store), they ought to be able to help you.

Most of the small animal problems that only a vet can fix, can instead be fixed for about $0.06 at home. Large animals like horses, cows, etc. are different, and may warrant a call to an actual vet. Just about the only thing that's probably worth a visit to a vet for a cat/dog is to have them "fixed" (which really ought to be called "broken" in my opinion - not because it shouldn't be done, simply because it's removing functionality).

There are a lot of bad products alongside the good ones at the local stores. At many farm supply stores, they have none of the good products. The ratio of good products to bad products is not in your pet's favor if you haven't asked a vet which ones are actually safe. (A phone call to the vet to confirm doesn't cost anything, by the way.) For example, commercial off-the-shelf flea & tick medicines and collars that cause anything from minor skin infection to major problems like necrosis and skin sloughing off under the collar are very commonly sold for a few years and then disappear/get recalled under mysterious circumstances. You're gambling on whether you're going to cause huge damage to your pet if you just do what you feel like doing with medications!! Don't just go there and assume that the stock boy is going to know more than a vet!

So wait, you're advocating going to people with even less knowledge than an average vet?

The main problem with your suggestion is that, in the early stages of virtually every disease, you and your farm supply store buddies will have no idea whether a condition is serious or not. In fact, in many cases, neither will a vet without the aid of special equipment or serial monitoring. Are your cats "goopy eyes" an infection or a corneal ulcer? Is your supply store dude just gonna whip out his ophthalmoscope and some staining compound to check that for you? What about lumps on your dog? Gonna change its diet, or actually get a biopsy done to check for cancer? How about grass seed injuries? You just gonna whip out a flick knife and cut that bastard out, or do you think your dog might want some pain killers with its skin incision? Etc, etc, etc.

On another topic, your advice won't work in countries like Australia or the UK, where antibiotics are unavailable without prescription (you know, because of this annoying thing called antibiotic resistance).

You think that's bad? Wait a few years until there's some kind of real problem and they come at you with a $3000 proposal for treatment and an application for a consumer credit account. No joke. People get very emotional about their pets. I knew a woman who put her dog through chemotherapy on credit and couldn't pay her rent.

Hopefully you don't live an an area where you are short on options, otherwise RUN. We ran into a vet very much like you are talking about. I won't go into the details of the $2000 fart when we though our dog was dying and we took him in OVERNIGHT, they gave her pepcid ac.. Our new vet just told us the dog needed to lose weight, got us on a great food to help do that along with our own being careful to not supplement with treats/dinner scraps, no such issue for years now.
What was worse, it is like you sai

I felt like our initial visit was almost like getting cased by a grifter; like they wanted to see how much I was willing to shell out. They started me out with a sample of a deworming med then asked for a stool sample from the pup which of course showed some parasite that had to be treated with another med. So, I've had her 2 weeks and besides vaccinations she's already been exposed to 2 medications. And, each visit has been a setup for another visit in the weeks to come. I just feel like i'm getting sucked

What makes me most angry is the treatment for Giardia. From what I have read, the most effective treatment is Panacur, which is available without prescription.

Yet, I have experienced vets prescribing something else before the cheap and effective Panacur, because Panacur is not approved for use against Giardia. Panacur is approved for use by dogs, just not for treatment of Giardia.

Ineffective treament means more diarrhea and more tests ($$$$) -- more discomfort for both dog and owner.

The adults in my immediate family (parents, siblings) all have medical power of attorney documents and clear instructions to never leave us in a situation where we're left to suffer or "burden" the family. We're all slated for cremation, with the ashes to go to anyone who might want them. None of us have a special desire to be remembered by a pile of cremains.

There are situations like Alzheimer's which could quite likely suck for everyone, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

We've dealt with a few cancers now, and we've (as a family) made the decisions to take treatments based on expected quality of life around it.

Pet related, I've had a few animals put down. Sad, but death is (mostly) a fact of life.

[With only 100 billion humans ever having lived, 7% of us are still alive today, making "being human" only 93% lethal to date...]

We had a cat go anemic and the vet said transfusion or the animal would die, we took him home and after 4 days of not eating and 2 of not moving and us force feeding him iron supplement and chicken soup we thought he was done for. I made one last call to the vet cause I knew if the animal didn't eat and drink it would die, the nice assistant I talked to said the cats that won't eat sometimes responded to baby food you know the gerber first stage chick or turkey, so I hit the grocery store on the way home an

You joke, but keep in mind that eye contact is a threatening gesture to most animals, cats especially. They show you that they trust you when they blink and look away. "I trust you enough that I feel comfortable not watching you". This is probably the source of the truism that the allergic person gets all of the attention: The cat lover stares and yells, "KITTY" while the allergic person avoids eye contact and is perceived to be the lowest threat.

But or dog has had hip trouble for 6 years. The first 5 we did nothing but keep him on glucosamine. The few times we took him off due to laziness or questioning it worked due to the Vet mentioning conflicting research, our dog noticeably declined. And within 2 weeks of him going back on it, he got better.

I have the same anecdotal experience. We had a toller with hip dysplasia. When his food was supplemented with glucosamine/chondritin/MSM, he was able to walk up and down stairs and jump up on the bed. When we stopped for a period of weeks, he was unable to do that without vocalizing in pain. Restoring the supplements caused the symptoms to go away.

I recognize that they're clinically unproven - and if we saw no benefit on it we'd go right to Rimadyl as needed. I've tried it for my creaking arthritis and seen

There was a very noticeable improvement in my friend's cat's gait when she (the cat) began taking a Cosequin supplement, so unless the placebo effect works for animals there was almost certainly something in the capsule that was beneficial to the cat.

For the first 5 years he had no periods of decline that didn't occur during the few times he was off glucosamine. It was only after glucosamine wasn't sufficient after 5 years that the vet prescribed Metacam, which seems to barely make a difference, but we've left him on it.

I'm aware of the potential for observation bias and anecdotes aren't scientific. I'm also aware of the low threshold for efficacy even for approved drugs, and while a study may not find statistically significant correlation on the who

hmm, I'll have to ask about this if the surgery on my unicorn goes well.My cat would probably like me to stop calling her a unicorn also:) She has a horn growing out of the side of her back leg the vet would really like to remove. She doesn't have a problem with it but the vet would like to remove it before it develops an absyss or something. Vet hasn't seen one so big or high up before...there really is an inch and a half long horn on her side.She is getting old (16 minimum) and you can see she is slower

The primary reason why opioids work as painkillers is specifically because they get you high. They dont really kill pain so much as they make you not care that you're in pain. So tramadol getting the dogs high means its working. Except the biggest problem with tramadol is that it works as an SSRI/SNRI first, and then its primary metabolite, O-desmethyl-tramadol, is what works as a pain killer (affecting the kappa and mu receptors). Tramadol is more of an antidepressant than a painkiller, which makes its addiction significantly worse (ask anyone who has withdrawn from antidepressants).

Yeah, but that comes with all kinds of shit... morphine is awesome, then you come off morphine and go "oh man this sucks". If I'm already in pain, I think I'll just live with it. Or kill myself. Nobody has ever given me a good story about having had morphine in the hospital. Ditto Xanax... had a coworker who said when he left his Xanax prescription behind it was... a bad couple weeks.

The only real reason they give you opiate drugs for pain is because of the whole killing yourself thing. Yeah, pain

Having taken tramadol myself I can say that it is quite effective at relieving pain. It also tends to keep me from sleeping. The withdrawal from it was unpleasant, just taking it once can give dizziness and nausea for hours after it wears off.

I hate tramadol but it seems some people really like it because of the intense high it can give. After the bad experience with tramadol I was able to convince my physician to give me codeine and hydrocodone (not at the same time) which works much better for me. Bec

When I read this, I was surprised that there was no mention of Rimadyl, as that's been the go-to NSAID for our dogs after surgeries. One google later let me know that Rimadyl was, indeed, carprofen, and I read the article again with that in mind.

Three times does "carprofen" appear in the article:"Its examples include one relevant to Kaleb, considering the effectiveness of glucosamine and chrondroitin versus an NSAID called carprofen in treating dogs with osteoarthritis. The bottom line: “Carprofen is superior to glucosamine/chrondroitin supplements in reducing the clinical signs.”"and"We plan to get some fresh tests to see how stable his kidney function is, and talk to our current vet in San Francisco about whether it’s time to try carprofen. "

If you're using non-proven supplements to treat your pet's pain instead of veterinary-recommended NSAIDs, then, yeah, perhaps it's time to talk to your current vet about whether it's time to try the painkiller that is clinically superior.

This was just after it came out around 1997. My wife and I had gotten a dog from a shelter about two years earlier, who turned out to be likely in retrospect much older than we had thought. Still, she was our "baby", as we did not have any kids then. And she was truly a wonderful dog, gentle as a lamb, but with a fearsome bark, looking a bit like a wolf. She would follow us everywhere and would spend all day laying by my feet as I programmed. She had started limping a bit from arthritis. I gave her baby asp

Not a clinical trial or a valid sample size but our elderly cat was making a noise that seemed to indicate she was having some discomfort whenever she jumped down from wherever she'd gotten to. Our vet suggested glucoamine so we gave it a try. Seemed to help. Cat no longer makes what sounds like a pain noise as she does her normal cat things. We've had her on glucosamine for a couple of years now. Ditto for the neighbors and their rottweiller with hip problems. Seemed to help her, too.

Thankfully, I am 100% confident that my kitty's thyroid medicine does work; she has hyperthyroidism from a benign tumor on her thyroid. It was VERY obvious that it was having a positive effect when the vet put her on it and I saw her plump up and feel tons better. Vomiting was another symptom... and that ceased. Another symptom was that she was dropping weight, which was scary because she was always hungry despite getting skinnier and skinnier. In fact, once she was on the medicine, she got a bit chubby

This is a bullshit article. The basis for it is that food supplements didn't (and don't) work but an NSAID would probably have worked. No shit. It's well known that the supplements industry for people is mostly snake oil. Of course it will be more so for pets. There are plenty of references on the net if you search, but in case you're lazy I just found this one [aljazeera.com]. If a drugs works, there may be side effects (as with the NSAIDs in the TFA). This doesn't mean that "pet medications don't work." It means you need to do your research and not believe the crap it says on the packet. If people stopped buying this shit, the companies would stop selling it.

Did you read the article, by chance? It doesn't say that "pet medications don't work." It says that sometimes they don't work because they're prescribed even though they're not supported by evidence.

You also said that people need to do their research... which is the same conclusion written in the article! Gah.

The surprising thing is that it is often vets making these poor recommendations. I expect many average folks without veterinary degrees to make these mistakes. Vets should be held to a higher standard.

Look my older cat is 8 year old, and I paid 60 euro per year for it. About 36 euro in 3 vets visits 12 euro per visits, the rest was the price for , 2 vaccination, and 1 de-worming. My younger cat is 5 year old same price. Even counting the castration which was maybe 60 euro , how the heck do they cam eto such horrendus price ? I have to count all food, cat toilet stuff and playtoy to come to 700+ euro top.

The figures come from a "pet owners survey", run by an association of pet product manufacturers. They aren't actual veterinary industry figures and have nothing to do with professional veterinary bodies.

For reference, my wife is a vet (in Australia), and her practice charges $45 for a consult. Even including routine meds, a client would probably have to visit her four times per year to reach the "non surgical" amount quoted in that survey, which would be quite rare except perhaps for puppies and geriatr

Out current vet is great. He makes house calls which is much less stressful for our cats. He doesn't seem to be aggressive about prescribing medication but will often tell us if there is a human OTC equivalent we can use when possible.

A good friend of ours has a cat that was chewing its fur off and required a cat food that is only available by prescription and she wasn't able to get it where she lived. Our vet recommended something similar and wrote us a prescription so we could get the cat food for our

My wife is a veterinarian and I cringe when I see stories like this. Some sensationalist with no medical knowledge skims a few studies or reports and makes a sensationalist article that has no basis in science or fact.

Tramadol is a good drug that helps a lot of animals with chronic pain. Cosequin helped my dog with hip dysplasia to be more comfortable for his last few years. Like many human drugs, efficacy varies by the patient, but the reality is that veterinarians as a whole are great people who truly love animals and would not prescribe things that did not work.

It's not clear if that $850 is figured out by dividing dogs owned by dollars spent, or if that's gleaned from veterinarians and pet med providers divided by their customers.

I suspect it's the later.

I know numerous pet owners who haven't ever spent a dime on their pet outside of bags of kibble and a flea collar or two. $850 might be the average, but it sure isn't realistic of what one might actually spend. Double or triple that, I'd hazard. More if you're in a "nice" neighborhood.

It could well be. While the average may be $850, the amount spent does not follow a normal bell curve distribution. IIRC, it takes the local human society about $200 to $300 to get a puppy ready for adoption (shots, spay/neuter). The average is dragged higher by spay/neuter, foreign object surgeries (dog ate something it shouldn’t.), oncology, knee surgery, etc. I know that a few cats get kidney transplants each year – owner of the sick cat has to adopt the donating animal.

I'm a cat owner. This average sounds about right to me. But keep in mind that this is an average, not a median, and the average is skewed upward by a small number of people* who spend thousands a year to fix problems that inevitably arise in their older pets. Cat chemotherapy, for example, costs about $100 a week.

*Who are these people? The wealth distribution of the united states is also highly skewed, with a long tail at the high end.

$850 a year - the heck? For our cat, we pay about $110 for yearly checkup/vaccination, and that's it. An occasional infection/irritation with steroids+antiobiotic was another $80 or so. That's in a US city of more than a million, BTW.

...that most pets only live around dozen years, so the vast majority of pet owners are going to see them die regardless of how well they're being taken care of.

True, but it's a cost/benefit calculation, with some very subjective factors.

A few years back, I had a dachshund that was roughly 14-ish years old (the rescue we got her from had to guess at her age when we got her at ~2yrs old). She had a habit of chasing squirrels at all costs - the last one had her hit a tree wrong and break her back. The choice was either a $6,000 surgery that would have still left her paralyzed and in need of care, or a $100 lethal injection and cremation. I wrote the check for $100, b

Which is why I had my dog put to sleep when she had a seizure, probably treatable, but she also had cancer and was 14 and had lost hear hearing about a month prior to the seizure. At that point all I could picture was leaving for work in the morning the dog having a seizure upstairs and taking a tumble down the stairs in the dazed and confused moments afterward and then lying there in pain broken for 8 hours until I got home to find her.

I really wish we could have put my dad down a couple of weeks before he died. Riddled with cancer, those last couple of weeks were not pleasant for him. Why is it that we treat our pets better then our old people?

Same as with a human, when they get older you can focus on hospice care to reduce pain and make sure they feel loved, or you can just kill them as soon as they have some aging pains.

There is generally not a need to give a lot of veterinary care to a pet outside of that analysis. The article suggests why; there is a lack of real and helpful medical care available for pets, even if you go to a vet.

What surprises me is how many people come up with a totally different answer to that for their pets than they do

I was about to say the same thing. Expecting the internet to remain readily accessible while you hide in your bunker from the collapse of civilization seems... optimistic at best. I have no doubt many dedicated people will go to great lengths to try to keep the main arteries functioning and the most important data archives online, but that doesn't do you much good unless your bunker is in the basement of a major university or other internet nexus. I don't expect the phone/cable/cellular technicians respo

How do you verify whether they are still effective? Shelf-life is a serious concern, and antibiotics are stored under specific conditions to maximize their effective lives. Dosing with an expired drug can have all sorts of unpleasant effects because the resulting chemicals may be worse than just nonfunctional.

In general it’s true that animal antibiotics are largely the same as those intended for human delivery, and many a veterinarian uses their office supplies on themselves. But even animal antibiotics are stored under specific conditions and are disposed of when they expire. That’s not just for commercial gain, it’s to ensure that the drugs do what they’re supposed to and not something unpredictable instead.

Bullshit. Expiration dates are randomly created in order to push products through. There is ** very little ** science about long term storage - most of it from the military and most of it saying that the shelf life is quite a bit longer than advertised.

And there is one class of antibiotic that is known to breakdown into something (relatively) toxic - that's the tetracyclines. Don't stockpile those. The rest of the drugs just get a little less potent. The bigger issue for most people in Scenario Zombie is 1) When to partake of your precious antibiotic store 2) which antibiotic 3) how much and how long. The Merk Manual is a good start, but best to friend your neighborhood doctor (or ICU nurse).

Bullshit. Expiration dates are randomly created in order to push products through. There is ** very little ** science about long term storage - most of it from the military and most of it saying that the shelf life is quite a bit longer than advertised.

The military has to stockpile medication for long periods of time, so they have an incentive to find out what the real shelf life is. Our military (deliberately obscuring who "our" is since I don't know if this was made public and couldn't be bothered checking) did long-term ageing tests on commonly-stockpiled stuff and found that medication stored for a decade was still 98% as effective as fresh stock. They're still waiting for the 20-year time period to come up to re-check it again.

There is ** very little ** science about long term storage - most of it from the military and most of it saying that the shelf life is quite a bit longer than advertised.

Actually there's quite a lot.Talk to a formulation chemist. Every drug formulation that is legal to sell has been left in storage at various temperatures and tested over time. Companies that have faked doing this have been banned from importing drugs to the US. Most drugs do just lose potency over time, but manufacturers have the goad of liability lawsuits when setting expiration dates. In general if you want something to last as long as possible: seal it tightly, put it in the dark at a constant temperatu